Danny and me

So, I’m back on Danny again. But maybe it’s good that I won’t be able to visit him much, what with the Saturday job and college. It’ll give him time to get better for me. It’s odd how he’s changed. When it was time to leave he held out his arms and hugged as if he didn’t want to let me go.

Then it was ‘Shit Jazz, what’s this stuff on your face,’ and he’s touching my cheek and looking at his black fingers and laughing again, and I’m saying ‘It’s barbeque charcoal – I had to use something and we didn’t have any stage make-up, but I’ll get some for next time,’ and I’m thinking Hey, it’s my colour that’s made him like me, even tho he knows it’s not real, and what the hell does that mean and how can I change it, you know, permanently, cos I would if it could make Danny love me. And I’m whispering ‘Danny, Danny, who do I remind you of?’ and he’s stepped back and is looking kinda funny and not answering, and I’m asking him again. And when he does say something it’s not what I expected to hear, which was that he used to be in love with an Indian girl once (and I wouldn’t have minded), but instead that he had a half-sister who died and it was good just for little while – until the stuff started to come off my face – to pretend that I was her, and that it almost made it real. But I’m thinking: Danny held me in his arms, he held me, and I’m singing inside and nothing, no dead sister, nothing, is going to take that away from me.

So today I’ve been trying to read Far from the Madding Crowd which is one of the books on my reading list, and feeling sorry for poor old Gabriel because Bathsheba doesn’t fancy him, but it’s difficult because I can’t get Danny out of my head and every so often I get up to look in the mirror at my black hair, which is quite a decent sort of black, not hard or Gothy at all but as natural as black hair could look on someone with pale skin and I’m thinking maybe I could dye my skin dark too.